David Lynch

Back in the United States, Lynch returned to Virginia, but since his parents had moved to Walnut Creek, California, he stayed with his friend Toby Keeler for a while. He decided to move to the city of Philadelphia and enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, after advice from Jack Fisk, who was already enrolled there. He preferred this college to his previous school in Boston, claiming that "In Philadelphia there were great and serious painters, and everybody was inspiring one another and it was a beautiful time there."[21] It was here that he began a relationship with a fellow student, Peggy Reavey, and they were married in 1967. The following year, Peggy gave birth to their daughter Jennifer. Later describing this situation, Peggy stated that "[Lynch] definitely was a reluctant father, but a very loving one. Hey, I was pregnant when we got married. We were both reluctant."[22] As a family, they moved to the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, where they were able to purchase a large 12-room house for the relatively low price of $3,500 due to the high crime and poverty rates in the area. Later describing living there, Lynch stated that

We lived cheap, but the city was full of fear. A kid was shot to death down the street ... We were robbed twice, had windows shot out and a car stolen. The house was first broken into only three days after we moved in ... The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was so intense. There was violence and hate and filth. But the biggest influence in my whole life was that city.[23]

Meanwhile, to help financially support his family alongside his art studies, he took up a job printing engravings.[24] At the Pennsylvania Academy, Lynch made his first short film, which was titled Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1967). He had first come up with the idea when he developed a wish to see his paintings move, and he subsequently began discussing the idea of creating an animation with an artist named Bruce Samuelson. When this project never came about, Lynch decided to work on a film alone, and so purchased the cheapest 16mm camera that he could find in order to do so. Taking one of the abandoned upper rooms of the Academy as a working space, he spent $150[25] – which at the time he felt to be a lot of money – to produce Six Men Getting Sick.[26] Describing the work as "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit", Lynch played the film on a loop at the Academy's annual end-of-year exhibit, where it shared joint first prize with a painting by Noel Mahaffey.[27][28] This led to a commission from one of his fellow students, the wealthy H. Barton Wasserman, who offered him $1000 to create a film installation in his home. Spending $478.28 of that on purchasing the second-hand Bolex camera "of [his] dreams", Lynch produced a new animated short, but upon getting the film developed, realized that the result was simply a blurred, frameless print. As he would later relate, "So I called up Bart [Wasserman] and said, 'Bart, the film is a disaster. The camera was broken and what I've done hasn't turned out.' And he said, 'Don't worry, David, take the rest of the money and make something else for me. Just give me a print.' End of story."[29]

Using this leftover money, Lynch decided to experiment with the making of a work that was a mix of animation with live action, producing a four-minute short called The Alphabet (1968). The film starred Lynch's wife Peggy as a character known as The Girl, who chants the alphabet to a series of images of horses before dying at the end by hemorrhaging blood all over her bed sheets. Adding a sound effect, Lynch used a broken Uher tape recorder to record the sound of his baby daughter Jennifer crying, creating a distorted sound that Lynch felt to be particularly effective. Later describing what had inspired him, Lynch stated that "Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that's sort of what started The Alphabet going. The rest of it was just subconscious."[28][30]

Learning about the newly founded American Film Institute, which gave grants to film makers who could support their application with a prior work and a script for a new project, Lynch decided to send them a copy of The Alphabet along with a script that he had written for a new short film, one that would be almost entirely live action, named The Grandmother.[31] The Institute agreed to help finance the work, initially offering him $5000 out of his requested budget of $7,200, but later granting him the additional $2,200 that he had requested. Starring people he knew from both work and college and filmed in his own house,[32] The Grandmother featured a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed to care for him. The film critics Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell later remarked that "this film is a true oddity but contains many of the themes and ideas that would filter into his later work, and shows a remarkable grasp of the medium".[33]

Lynch's Eraserhead, featuring Henry Spencer (Jack Nance)

In 1971, Lynch moved with his wife and daughter to Los Angeles, where he began studying filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory, a place that he would later describe as being "completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great ... you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing."[34] He began writing a script for a proposed work titled Gardenback, which had "unfolded from this painting I'd done". In this venture he was supported by a number of figures at the Conservatory, who encouraged him to lengthen the script and add more dialogue, something that he reluctantly agreed to do. Nonetheless, with all the interference on his Gardenback project, he became fed up with the Conservatory and quit after returning to start the second year and being put in first year classes. Dean of the AFI, Frank Daniel, asked Lynch to reconsider, believing that he was one of the school's best students. Lynch agreed on the condition that he could create his own project that would not be interfered with. Feeling that Gardenback was "wrecked", he instead set about on a new film, which he called Eraserhead.[35]

Despite the fact that the film was planned to be about forty-two minutes long (it ended up being eighty-nine minutes long), the script for Eraserhead was only 21 pages long, and Lynch was able to create the film free from interference. Filming, which began on May 29, 1972, took place at night in some abandoned stables, allowing the production team, which was largely Lynch and some of his friends, including Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes and sound designer Alan Splet to set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets as well as a food room and a bathroom.[36] Initially, funding for the project came from the AFI, who gave Lynch a $10,000 grant, but it was not enough to complete the work, and under pressure from studios after the success of the relatively cheap feature film Easy Rider, they were unable to provide him with any more. Lynch was then supported by a loan from his father, and by money that he was able to bring in from a paper route that he took up delivering the Wall Street Journal.[37][38] Not long into the production of Eraserhead, Lynch and his wife Peggy amicably separated and divorced, and so he began living full-time on set. In 1977, Lynch would remarry, this time to Mary Fisk, sister of Jack Fisk.[39]

Lynch has stated that not a single reviewer of the film understood it the way that he intended. Filmed in black and white, Eraserhead tells the story of a quiet young man named Henry (Jack Nance) living in a dystopian industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby whom she leaves in his care. It was heavily influenced by the fearful mood of Philadelphia, and Lynch referred to the film as "my Philadelphia Story".[40][41]

Due to financial problems the filming of Eraserhead was haphazard, regularly stopping and starting again. It was in one such break in 1974 that Lynch created a short film titled The Amputee, which is a short one-shot film about two minutes long. David Lynch proposed that he make the film which would become The Amputee to present to AFI to test two different types of film stock.

Eraserhead was finally finished in 1976, after five years of production. Lynch subsequently tried to get the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, but while some reviewers liked it, others felt that it was awful, and so it was not selected for screening. Similarly, reviewers from the New York Film Festival also rejected it, though it was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where Ben Barenholtz, the distributor of the Elgin Theater, heard about it.[42] He was very supportive of the movie, helping to distribute it around the United States in 1977, and Eraserhead subsequently became popular on the midnight movie underground circuit,[43] and was later described as one of the most important midnight movies of the seventies along with El Topo, Pink Flamingos, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Harder They Come and Night of the Living Dead.[44] The acclaimed film maker Stanley Kubrick said that it was one of his all-time favorite films.[45]

After the cult success of Eraserhead on the underground circuit, Stuart Cornfeld, an executive producer for Mel Brooks, saw it and later remarked that "I was just 100 percent blown away ... I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It was such a cleansing experience."[46] Contacting Lynch, he agreed to help him with his next planned project, a film titled Ronnie Rocket for which Lynch had already written a script. However, Lynch soon realized that Ronnie Rocket, a film that he described as being about "electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair", was not going to be picked up by any financiers, and so he asked Cornfeld to find him a script written by someone else which he could direct. Cornfeld found him four possible scripts. On hearing the title of the first, The Elephant Man, Lynch chose the script.[47]

The Elephant Man script, written by Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren, was based on a true story, that of Joseph Merrick, a heavily deformed man living in Victorian London, who was held in a sideshow but was later taken under the care of a London surgeon, Frederick Treves. Lynch wanted to make some alterations that would alter the story from true events, but in his view make a better plot.[48] However, in order to do so he would have to get the permission of Mel Brooks, whose company, Brooksfilms, would be responsible for production; subsequently Brooks viewed Eraserhead, and after coming out of the screening theatre, embraced Lynch, declaring that "You're a madman, I love you! You're in."[49]

The resulting film, The Elephant Man, starred John Hurt as John Merrick (his name was changed from Joseph), as well as Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves. Filming took place in London, and Lynch brought his own distinctively surrealist approach to the film, and filmed it in black and white. Nonetheless it has been described as "one of the most conventional" of his films.[50] The Elephant Man was a huge critical and commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Lynch personally.[51]

Following on from the success of The Elephant Man, the filmmaker George Lucas, himself a fan of Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi. Lynch refused, arguing that Lucas should direct the film himself as the movie should reflect his own vision, not Lynch's take on it.[41][52] Soon after, however, the opportunity to direct another big-budget science fiction epic arose when Dino de Laurentiis of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group asked him to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune (1965).[52] Lynch agreed, and in doing so was also contractually obliged to produce two other works for the company. He then set about writing a script based upon the original novel, initially with both Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren, and then just by himself when De Laurentiis wasn't happy with their ideas.[53] Lynch also helped build some of the sets, attempting to create "a certain look" for the film, and he particularly enjoyed building the set for the oil planet of Giedi Prime, for which he "used steel, bolts, and porcelain to construct" it.[54]

Dune is set in the far future, when humans live in an interstellar empire under a feudal system. The main character, Paul Atreides (played by Kyle MacLachlan), is the son of a noble who takes control of the desert planet Arrakis, which grows the rare spice melange, the most highly prized commodity in the empire. Lynch, however, was unhappy with the work, later remarking that "Dune was a kind of studio film. I didn't have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises" [to his own vision].[55] Much of his footage was eventually removed from the final theatrical cut, dramatically condensing the plot.[56] Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be as successful as Star Wars, Lynch's Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it had cost $45 million to make, and grossed a mere $27.4 million domestically. Later on, Universal Studios released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television, containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration. Such was not representative of Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the original two-hour version. Lynch objected to these changes and had his name struck from the extended cut, which has "Alan Smithee" credited as the director and "Judas Booth" (a pseudonym which Lynch himself invented, inspired by his own feelings of betrayal) as the screenwriter.[57]

Meanwhile, in 1983, he had begun the writing and drawing of a comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World, which featured unchanging graphics of a tethered dog that was so angry that it could not move, alongside cryptic philosophical references. It ran from 1983 until 1992 in the Village Voice, Creative Loafing and other tabloid and alternative publications.[58] It was around this period that Lynch also became interested in photography as an art form, and travelled to northern England to take photos of the degrading industrial landscape, something that he was particularly interested in.[59]

Following on from Dune, Lynch was contractually still obliged to produce two other projects for De Laurentiis: the first of these was a planned sequel, which due to the film's lack of success never went beyond the script stage.[53] The other was a more personal work, based upon a script that Lynch had been working on for some time. Developing from ideas that Lynch had had since 1973, the resulting film, Blue Velvet, was set in the real town of Lumberton, North Carolina, USA, and revolves around a college student named Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who finds a severed ear in a field. Subsequently, investigating further with the help of friend Sandy (Laura Dern), he uncovers that it is related to a criminal gang led by psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped the husband and child of singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and repeatedly subjects her to rape. Lynch himself characterizes the story as "a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story".[60]

For the film, Lynch decided to include pop songs from the 1960s, including "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, the latter of which was largely inspirational for the film, with Lynch stating that "It was the song that sparked the movie ... There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns – lawns and the neighborhood."[61] Other music for the film was also produced, this time composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who would go on to produce the music for most of Lynch's subsequent cinematic works.[62] Dino de Laurentiis loved the film, and it achieved support from some of the early specialist screenings, but the preview screenings to a mainstream audience were instead highly negative, with most of the audience hating the film.[63] Although Lynch had found success previously with The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet's controversy with audiences and critics introduced him into the mainstream, and it became a huge critical and moderate commercial success. The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Woody Allen, whose film Hannah and Her Sisters was nominated for Best Picture, said that Blue Velvet was his favorite film of the year.[64]

Lynch at the 1990 Emmy Awards ceremony

During the late 1980s, Lynch had begun to work in television as well as cinema, directing a short piece titled The Cowboy and the Frenchman for French television in 1989.[65] Around this time, he met the television producer Mark Frost, who had formerly worked on such projects as the television police series Hill Street Blues, and they decided to start working together on a biopic of singer and actress Marilyn Monroe based upon Anthony Summers's book, The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. While this project never got off the ground, the duo went on to work on a comedy script named One Saliva Bubble, but that did not see completion either.[66][67] While they were talking in a coffee shop, Lynch and Frost had the idea of a corpse washing up on the shore of a lake, and subsequently set about on their third project, initially called Northwest Passage but would eventually become the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991).[68] A drama series set in a small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer has been murdered, Twin Peaks featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to unearth the killer, and discovering not only the supernatural elements to the murder but also the secrets of many of the local townsfolk; as Lynch himself summed it up, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." Lynch later revealed that "[Mark Frost and I] worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They pitched the series to the ABC Network, who agreed to finance the pilot episode and eventually commissioned the first season, comprising seven episodes.[69]

A second season went into production soon on 22 additional episodes. Lynch himself only directed six episodes of the series, devoting his time to working on the film Wild at Heart, but carefully chose the directors for other episodes.[70] Lynch appeared in several episodes of the series as the deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high ratings both in the United States and in many nations abroad, and soon spawned a cult following. Executives at the ABC Network, however, believed that public interest in the show was decreasing. The network insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal who the killer of Laura Palmer was prematurely, which they begrudgingly agreed to do.[71] Lynch felt that agreeing to do so is one of his biggest professional regrets.[72] Following the revealing of the murderer and the series' move from Thursday to Saturday night, Twin Peaks continued for several more episodes, but was cancelled following a ratings drop. Lynch, who disliked the direction that the writers and directors took in the previous episodes, directed the final episode. He ended the season on a cliffhanger, later remarking that "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with."[73]

While Twin Peaks was in production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Lynch and the composer Angelo Badalamenti, who had been responsible for the music in Twin Peaks, to create a theatrical piece which would be performed only twice in 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. The result was Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted, which starred frequent Lynch collaborators such as Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Michael J. Anderson, and contained five songs sung by Julee Cruise. David Lynch produced a fifty-minute video of the performance in 1990.[74] Meanwhile, Lynch was also involved in the creation of various commercials for different companies, including perfume companies like Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani and the Japanese coffee company Namoi, which featured a Japanese man searching the town of Twin Peaks for his missing wife.[75]

Lynch at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival

While Lynch was working on the first few episodes of Twin Peaks, his friend Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford's novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, which told the tale of two lovers on a road trip. Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened."[77] With Gifford's support, Lynch adapted the novel into a film called Wild at Heart, a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula.[78] Describing his plot as a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", Lynch altered much from the original novel, changing the ending and incorporating numerous references to the classic film The Wizard of Oz.[79] Despite receiving a muted response from American critics and viewers, it won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.[5]

Following on from the success of Wild at Heart, Lynch decided to return to the world of the now-cancelled Twin Peaks, this time without Mark Frost, to create a film that acted primarily as a prequel but also, in part, as a sequel, with Lynch stating that "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time."[80] The result, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days in the life of Laura Palmer, and was much "darker" in tone than the television series, having much of the humour removed, and dealing with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch himself stated that the film was about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest". Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was financed by the company CIBY-2000, and most of the cast of the series agreed to reprise their roles for the film, although some refused and many were not enthusiastic about the project.[81] The film was a commercial and critical failure in the United States; however, it was a hit in Japan and some critics, such as Mark Kermode, have hailed it as Lynch's "masterpiece".[82]

Meanwhile, Lynch worked on some new television shows. After Twin Peaks, he and Mark Frost created the comedy series On the Air (1992), which was cancelled after only three episodes had aired, and he created with Monty Montgomery the three-episode HBO miniseries Hotel Room (1993) about events that happen in one hotel room but on different dates.[83]

In 1993, Lynch collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki to film the music video for X Japan's song "Longing ~Setsubou no Yoru~". The video was never officially released, but Lynch claimed in his 2018 memoir Room to Dream that "some of the frames are so fuckin' beautiful, you can't believe it."[84]

Following these unsuccessful television ventures, Lynch returned to making feature films. In 1997 he released the non-linear, noiresque Lost Highway, which was co-written by Barry Gifford and starred Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics.[85][86]

Following Lost Highway, Lynch began work directing a film from a script written by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach. The resulting motion picture, The Straight Story was based upon a true story: that of Alvin Straight (played in the film by Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on a three hundred mile journey to visit his sick brother (played by Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, riding a lawnmower for the entire journey. Commenting on why he chose this script, Lynch said that "that's what I fell in love with next", and displayed his admiration for Straight, describing him as "like James Dean, except he's old".[87] Angelo Badalamenti again produced the music for the film, although it was "very different from the kind of score he's done for [Lynch] in the past".[88]

Among the many differences with his earlier films, The Straight Story did not contain profanity, sexuality or violence, and was rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, which came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify".[89] As Le Blanc and Odell stated, the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film – a surreal road movie".[90]

Naomi Watts, David Lynch, Laura Elena Harring and Justin Theroux at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival

The same year, Lynch approached ABC once again with ideas for a television drama. The network gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series Mulholland Drive, but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved indefinitely. However, with seven million dollars from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film, Mulholland Drive. The film, a non-linear narrative surrealist tale of the dark side of Hollywood, stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The film performed relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success, earning Lynch a Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) and a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Association. In addition, Lynch received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Director.[91] In 2016, the film was named the top film of the 21st century by the BBC following a poll of 177 film critics from 36 countries.[92]

With the rising popularity of the Internet, Lynch decided to utilize it as a new distribution channel, releasing several new series that he had created exclusively on his website, davidlynch.com which went online on December 10, 2001.[93] In 2002, he created a series of online shorts named DumbLand. Intentionally crude both in content and execution, the eight-episode series was later released on DVD.[94] The same year, Lynch released a surreal sitcom on his website called Rabbits, about a family of humanoid rabbits. Later, he made his experiments with Digital Video available in the form of the Japanese-style horror short Darkened Room. In 2006, Lynch's feature film Inland Empire was released. At three hours long, it was the longest of Lynch's films. Like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway before it, the film did not follow a traditional narrative structure. It starred Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton and Justin Theroux, with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring (voices of Suzie and Jane Rabbit), and a performance by Jeremy Irons. Lynch described the piece as "a mystery about a woman in trouble". In an effort to promote the film, Lynch made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan "Without cheese there would be no Inland Empire".[95]

In 2009, Lynch produced a documentary web series directed by his son, Austin Lynch, and friend Jason S. called Interview Project.[96] Interested in working with Werner Herzog, Lynch collaborated with him in 2009 to produce Herzog's film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?. Using a non-standard narrative, the film was based on the true story of an actor who committed matricide while acting in a production of the Oresteia, and starred Grace Zabriskie, a Lynch regular.[97] In 2009 Lynch had plans to direct a documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi consisting of interviews with people who knew him,[98] but since then nothing was heard about it anymore.

In 2010, Lynch began making guest appearances on the Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show as Gus the Bartender. He had been convinced to appear in the show by its lead actor, Mike Henry, who is a fan of Lynch and who felt that his whole life had changed after seeing Wild at Heart.[99] Lady Blue Shanghai is a 16-minute promotional film that was written, directed and edited by Lynch for Dior. It was released on the Internet in May 2010.

Lynch directed a concert by English new wave band Duran Duran on March 23, 2011. The concert was streamed live on YouTube from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the kickoff to the second season of Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express. "The idea is to try and create on the fly, layers of images permeating Duran Duran on the stage", Lynch said. "A world of experimentation and hopefully some happy accidents".[100] The animated short I Touch a Red Button Man, a collaboration between Lynch and the band Interpol, played in the background during Interpol's concert at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2011. The short, which features Interpol's song "Lights", was later made available online.[101]

It was believed that Lynch was going to retire from the film industry; according to Abel Ferrara, Lynch "doesn't even want to make films any more. I've talked to him about it, OK? I can tell when he talks about it."[102] However, in a June 2012 Los Angeles Times interview, Lynch stated that he lacked the inspiration to start a new movie project, but "If I got an idea that I fell in love with, I'd go to work tomorrow".[103] In September 2012, Lynch appeared in the three-part "Late Show" arc on FX's Louie as Jack Dahl. In November 2012, Lynch hinted at plans for a new film while attending Plus Camerimage in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Speaking at the festival, Lynch said "something is coming up. It will happen but I don't know exactly when".[104] At Plus Camerimage, Lynch was also presented with a lifetime achievement award and the key to the city by Bydgoszcz's mayor Rafał Bruski.[105] During an interview with the Los Angeles Times in January 2013, frequent Lynch collaborator Laura Dern confirmed she and Lynch are planning a new project,[106][107] and The New York Times later revealed Lynch is working on the script.[108] Idem Paris, a short documentary film about the lithographic process, was released online in February 2013.[109] On June 28, 2013, a music video directed by Lynch for the Nine Inch Nails song "Came Back Haunted" was released.[110] He also did photography for the self-titled album from Dumb Numbers released August 2013.[111]

Lynch (left) with Kyle MacLachlan at the 2017 premiere of Twin Peaks: The Return.

On October 6, 2014, Lynch confirmed via Twitter that he would start shooting together with Mark Frost a new, nine-episode season of Twin Peaks in 2015, with the episodes expected to air in early 2016 on Showtime.[112] Lynch and Frost wrote all nine episodes. On April 5, 2015, Lynch announced via Twitter that the project was still alive, but he was no longer going to direct because the budget was too low for what he wanted to do.[113] However, he later announced on May 15, 2015, via Twitter, that he would indeed be returning to the revival, as he had sorted out his issues with Showtime.[114] This was later confirmed by Showtime CEO David Nevins, who announced that Lynch would direct every episode of the revival and that the original order of nine episodes had been extended to eighteen episodes.[115] By January 2016, the series was halfway through the shooting schedule and filming was completed by April 2016.[116][117] The two-episode premiere aired May 21, 2017.[118] While doing press for Twin Peaks, he was again asked if he was retired from film and confirmed that he had made his last feature film, responding, "Things changed a lot... So many films were not doing well at the box office even though they might have been great films and the things that were doing well at the box office weren't the things that I would want to do".[119] Lynch later clarified that this statement had been misconstrued, and reiterated "I did not say I quit cinema. Simply that nobody knows what the future holds."[120]

Since the last episode of The Return aired, there has been speculation as to whether there will be a fourth season of Twin Peaks or not. Though Lynch has not denied the possibility of another season, he has said if it were to happen, it would not air before 2021.[121]

On February 21, 2020, the Twin Peaks Archive questioned Lynch if there was a casting in progress for an upcoming project. Later, Francine "The Lucid Dream" confirmed that she was the brunette that the rumors were saying Lynch was casting. She then posted a picture of herself on Instagram with her at Showtime at Joe's Pub further confirming that she is the brunette that Lynch is casting.[122]

Lynch says that his work is more similar in many respects to that of European filmmakers than American ones, believing that most films that "get down and thrill your soul" are from European directors.[124] Lynch has commented on his admiration for such film makers as Federico Fellini,[124] Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock,[125] Roman Polanski, and Jacques Tati,[124] along with film directors Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder. He has stated that Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) is one of his favorite motion pictures,[126] as is Kubrick's Lolita (1962), Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), and Herzog's Stroszek (1977).[127] He has also cited Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962) and Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970) as an influence on his work.[128]

There are several recurring themes within Lynch's work, leading film critics Le Blanc and Odell to state that "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas".[129] One of the key themes that they noted was the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery and structure within his works, something they related to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive". This can be seen in John Merrick's dream of his mother in The Elephant Man, Agent Cooper's dreams of the red room in Twin Peaks and the "dreamlike logic" of the narrative found in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.[130] Discussing his attitude to dreams, Lynch has stated that "Waking dreams are the ones that are important, the ones that come when I'm quietly sitting in a chair, letting my mind wander. When you sleep, you don't control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made or discovered; a world I choose ... [You can't really get others to experience it, but] right there is the power of cinema."[131] His films are known for their use of magic realism. The motif of dreams is closely linked to his recurring use of drones, real-world sounds and musical styles.[132]

Another of Lynch's prominent themes is industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories", as can be seen with the industrial wasteland in Eraserhead, the factories in The Elephant Man, the sawmill in Twin Peaks and the lawn mower in The Straight Story.[133] Describing his interest in such things, Lynch stated that "It makes me feel good to see giant machinery, you know, working: dealing with molten metal. And I like fire and smoke. And the sounds are so powerful. It's just big stuff. It means that things are being made, and I really like that."[134]

Another theme is the dark underbelly of violent criminal activity within a society, such as with Frank Booth’s gang in Blue Velvet and the cocaine smugglers in Twin Peaks. The idea of deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, from The Elephant Man to the deformed baby in Eraserhead, as well as death from head wounds, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery commonly used in Lynch's works are flickering electricity or lights, fire and stages upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery.[133]

With the exception of The Elephant Man and Dune, which are set in Victorian London and a fictitious galaxy respectively, all of Lynch's films have been set in the United States, and he has stated that "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films."[135] A number of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway are intentionally reminiscent of the 1950s American culture despite being set in the later decades of the 20th century. Lynch stated that "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways ... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork for a disastrous future."[136]

Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his choice to cast Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and continued in his later works. In Lost Highway, Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield, while in Mulholland Drive Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita and in Inland Empire Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. The numerous alternative versions of lead characters and numerous examples of fragmented timelines may echo and/or reference the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and perhaps Lynch's broader interest in quantum physics/quantum theory.[137] Some have also suggested that Lynch's love for the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo, which employs a split lead character (the Judy Barton and Madeleine Elster characters, both portrayed by Kim Novak) may have had an influence on this aspect of Lynch's work.[138][139]

His films frequently feature characters that have supernatural and omnipotent qualities. They can be seen as physical manifestations of various different concepts, such as hatred or fear. Examples of these characters are The Man Inside the Planet from Eraserhead, BOB from Twin Peaks, The Mystery Man from Lost Highway, The Bum in Mulholland Drive, and The Phantom in Inland Empire. Lynch approaches his characters and film content in a way that steeps them in a dream state rather than reality.[140]

Lynch is also widely noted for his collaborations with various production artists and composers on his films and other productions.[141] He frequently works with Angelo Badalamenti to compose music for his productions, former wife Mary Sweeney as a film editor, casting director Johanna Ray, and cast members Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, and Laura Dern.

Lynch's painting So This Is Love, 1992

Lynch first trained as a painter, and although he is now better known as a filmmaker, he has continued to paint. Lynch has stated that "all my paintings are organic, violent comedies. They have to be violently done and primitive and crude, and to achieve that I try to let nature paint more than I paint."[143] Many of his works are very dark in colour, and Lynch has said this is because

I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, the more dreamy it gets ... Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.[144]

Many of his works also contain letters and words added to the painting. He explains:

The words in the paintings are sometimes important to make you start thinking about what else is going on in there. And a lot of times, the words excite me as shapes, and something'll grow out of that. I used to cut these little letters out and glue them on. They just look good all lined up like teeth ... sometimes they become the title of the painting.[143]

Lynch considers the 20th-century Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon to be his "number one kinda hero painter", stating that "Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter's work, but I like everything of Bacon's. The guy, you know, had the stuff."[145]

Lynch was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March 3 – May 27, 2007. The show was titled The Air is on Fire and included numerous paintings, photographs, drawings, alternative films and sound work. New site-specific art installations were created specially for the exhibition. A series of events accompanied the exhibition including live performances and concerts.[146]

His alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, presented an exhibition of his work, entitled "The Unified Field", which opened on September 12, 2014 and ended in January 2015.[147]

Lynch is represented by Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, and has been exhibiting his paintings, drawings, and photography with the gallery since 2011.[148]

His favorite photographers include William Eggleston (The Red Ceiling), Joel-Peter Witkin, and Diane Arbus.[149]

Lynch in August 2007

Lynch has also been involved in a number of music projects, many of them related to his films. His album genres switch mainly between experimental rock, ambient soundscapes and, most recently, avant-garde electropop music. Most notably he produced and wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise's first two albums, Floating into the Night (1989) and The Voice of Love (1993), in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti who composed the music and also produced. Lynch also worked on the 1998 Jocelyn Montgomery album Lux Vivens (Living Light), The Music of Hildegard von Bingen.[150] For his own productions, he composed music for Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Mulholland Drive, and Rabbits. In 2001, he released BlueBob, a rock album performed by Lynch and John Neff. The album is notable for Lynch's unusual guitar playing style. He plays "upside down and backwards, like a lap guitar", and relies heavily on effects pedals.[151] Most recently Lynch composed several pieces for Inland Empire, including two songs, "Ghost of Love" and "Walkin' on the Sky", in which he makes his public debut as a singer. In 2009, his new book-CD set Dark Night of the Soul was released.[152] In 2008, he started his own record label called David Lynch MC which first released Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi in early 2009. In August 2009, it was announced that he was releasing Afghani/American singer Ariana Delawari's Lion of Panjshir album in conjunction with Manimal Vinyl record company.

In November 2010, Lynch released two electropop music singles, "Good Day Today" and "I Know", through the independent British label Sunday Best Recordings. Describing why he created them, he stated that "I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that".[153] The singles were followed by an album, Crazy Clown Time, which was released in November 2011 and described as an "electronic blues album".[154] The songs were sung by Lynch, with guest vocals on one track by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,[155] and composed and performed by Lynch and Dean Hurley.[154] All or most of the songs for Crazy Clown Time were put into art-music videos, Lynch directing the title song's video.[156][157][158][159] The Crazy Clown Time song and video are a fantastic minimalistic parody of hip-hop music and videos.

On September 29, 2011, Lynch released This Train with vocalist and long-time musical collaborator Chrysta Bell on the La Rose Noire label.[160] The 11-song album was produced by Lynch and co-written primarily by Lynch and Chrysta Bell.[161] It includes the song "Polish Poem" which is featured on the Inland Empire soundtrack. The musical partnership also yielded a 5- song EP entitled Somewhere In the Nowhere, released October 7, 2016, on Meta Hari Records.[162]

Lynch's third studio album, The Big Dream, was released in 2013 and included the single "I'm Waiting Here", with Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li.[163] The Big Dream's release was preceded by TBD716, an enigmatic 43-second video featured on Lynch's YouTube and Vine accounts.[164]

For Record Store Day 2014, David Lynch released The Big Dream Remix EP which featured four songs from his album remixed by various artists. This included the track "Are You Sure" remixed by Bastille. The band Bastille have been known to take inspiration from David Lynch's work for their songs and music videos, the main one being their song "Laura Palmer" which is influenced by Lynch's television show Twin Peaks.[165]

On November 2, 2018, a collaborative album by Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, titled Thought Gang, was released on vinyl and on compact disc. The album was recorded around 1993 but was unreleased at the time. Two tracks from the album already appeared on the soundtrack from the 1992 movie 'Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me' and three other tracks were used for the 'Twin Peaks' TV series in 2017.[166][167]

In May 2019, Lynch provided guest vocals on the track Fire is Coming by Flying Lotus. He also co-wrote the track that appears on Flying Lotus' album Flamagra. A video accompanying the song was released on April 17, 2019.[168]

Lynch designed and constructed furniture for his 1997 film Lost Highway, notably the small table in the Madison house and the VCR case. In April 1997, he presented a furniture collection at the prestigious Milan Furniture Fair in Italy. "Design and music, art and architecture – they all belong together."[169]

Working with designer Raphael Navot, architectural agency Enia and light designer Thierry Dreyfus, Lynch has conceived and designed a nightclub in Paris.[170] "Silencio" opened in October 2011, and is a private members' club although is free to the public after midnight. Patrons have access to concerts, films and other performances by artists and guests. Inspired by the club of the same name in his 2001 film Mulholland Drive, the underground space consists of a series of rooms, each dedicated to a certain purpose or atmosphere. "Silencio is something dear to me. I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won't be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to programme or create what they want."[171]

In 2006, Lynch authored a short book describing his creative processes, stories from throughout his career, and the benefits he had realized through his practice of Transcendental Meditation called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. He describes the metaphor behind the title in the introduction:

Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.

The book weaves a non-linear autobiography with descriptions of Lynch's cognitive experiences during Transcendental Meditation.[172] All author's royalties will be donated to the David Lynch Foundation.

Together with Kristine McKenna, Lynch, in June 2018, published the book Room to Dream. The book is a hybrid of biography and memoir. The book gives the reader a look into his personal and creative life through his own words and through those of his colleagues, family and friends.[173]

Lynch has had several long-term relationships. In 1967, he married Peggy Lentz in Chicago, Illinois.[175] They had one child, Jennifer Lynch, born in 1968, who is a film director. They filed for divorce in 1974. On June 21, 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, and the couple had one child, Austin Jack Lynch, born in 1982. They divorced in 1987. Lynch later developed a relationship with Mary Sweeney, with whom he had one son, Riley. Sweeney also worked as Lynch's longtime film editor/producer and co-wrote and produced The Straight Story. The two married in May 2006, but divorced that July. In 2009 Lynch married actress Emily Stofle, who appeared in his 2006 film Inland Empire as well as the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks. The couple have one child, Lula Boginia Lynch, born in 2012.

Lynch has said that he is "not a political person" and that politics is "something [he] know[s] little about".[176] However, in the 1990s he expressed admiration for former US President Ronald Reagan,[177] stating that "I mostly liked that he carried a wind of old Hollywood, of a cowboy."[176] Describing his political philosophy in 2006, he stated, "at that time, I thought of myself as a libertarian. I believed in next to zero government. And I still would lean toward no government and not so many rules, except for traffic lights and things like this. I really believe in traffic regulations."[178] Lynch continued to state that "I'm a Democrat now. And I've always been a Democrat, really. But I don't like the Democrats a lot, either, because I'm a smoker, and I think a lot of the Democrats have come up with these rules for non-smoking."[178] He endorsed the center-left Natural Law Party in the 2000 presidential election[179] and later stated that he would vote for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.[180]

In the 2016 United States presidential election, he endorsed Bernie Sanders,[181] whom he described as "for the people."[182] He voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary [183] and for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the general election. [184] In a June 2018 interview with The Guardian, he stated that Donald Trump could go down as "one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way." He added: "Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this."[183] The interviewer clarified that "while Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might."[183] After President Trump invoked a Breitbart article claiming Lynch as his supporter, Lynch clarified on his official Facebook page that the quote was taken "a bit out of context" and stated that Trump is "causing suffering and division," advising him to "treat all the people as you would like to be treated."[185]

Lynch speaking on Transcendental Meditation and the creative process in 2007[186]

Lynch advocates the use of Transcendental Meditation in bringing peace to the world.[187] He was initiated into Transcendental Meditation in July 1973, and has practiced the technique consistently since then.[188][189] Lynch says he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM movement, for the first time in 1975 at the Spiritual Regeneration Movement center in Los Angeles, California.[190][191] He reportedly became close with the Maharishi during a month-long "Millionaire's Enlightenment Course" held in 2003, the fee for which was US$1 million.[192]

In July 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace,[193][194] established to help finance scholarships for students in middle and high schools who are interested in learning the Transcendental Meditation technique and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. Together with John Hagelin and Fred Travis, a brain researcher from Maharishi University of Management (MUM), Lynch promoted his vision on college campuses with a tour that began in September 2005.[195] Lynch is on the board of trustees of MUM[196] and has hosted an annual "David Lynch Weekend for World Peace and Meditation" there since 2005.[197]

Lynch was working for the building and establishment of seven buildings, in which 8,000 salaried people would practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at US$7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent US$400,000 of personal money, and raised US$1 million in donations.[189] In December 2006, the New York Times reported that he continued to have that goal.[193] Lynch's book, Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), discusses the impact of the Transcendental Meditation technique on his creative process. Lynch attended the funeral of the Maharishi in India in 2008.[192] He told a reporter, "In life, he revolutionised the lives of millions of people. ... In 20, 50, 500 years there will be millions of people who will know and understand what the Maharishi has done."[198] In 2009, he went to India to film interviews with people who knew the Maharishi as part of a biographical documentary.[199][200]

In 2009, Lynch organized a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. On April 4, 2009, the "Change Begins Within" concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys.[201] David Wants to Fly, released in May 2010, is a documentary by German filmmaker David Sieveking "that follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM)".[202][203] In this very personal documentary Sieveking deals critically with the Transcendental Mediatation. At the end of the film, it becomes clear that Sieveking rated the engagement of his former idol Lynch as problematic.[204]

An independent project starring Lynch called Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey, directed by film student Dana Farley, who has severe dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, was shown at film festivals in 2011,[205] including the Marbella Film Festival.[206] Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers.[207] In 2013 Lynch wrote: "Transcendental Meditation leads to a beautiful, peaceful revolution. A change from suffering and negativity to happiness and a life more and more free of any problems."[187]

In 2019 British contemporary artist Alexander de Cadenet interviewed David Lynch about his views on enlightenment and Transcendental Meditation. Lynch commented about the technique saying; “Here’s an experience that utilizes the full brain, that’s what it’s for; it’s for enlightenment, for higher states of consciousness culminating in the highest state of unity consciousness.” [208]

Lynch designed his personal website, a site exclusive to paying members, where he posts short videos and his absurdist series Dumbland, plus interviews and other items. The site also featured a daily weather report, where Lynch gives a brief description of the weather in Los Angeles, where he resides. Until June 2010, this weather report (usually no longer than 30 seconds) was also being broadcast on his personal YouTube channel, David Lynch – Daily Weather Report.[209][210] An absurd ringtone ("I like to kill deer") from the website was a common sound bite on The Howard Stern Show in early 2006.

Lynch is a coffee drinker and has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website as well as in Whole Foods.[211][212] Called "David Lynch Signature Cup", the coffee has been advertised via flyers included with several recent Lynch-related DVD releases, including Inland Empire and the Gold Box edition of Twin Peaks. The possibly self-mocking tag-line for the brand is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans."[213] This is also a quote of a line said by Justin Theroux's character in Inland Empire.